


Bellwether, Book and Candle

by aponyforyourthroney



Category: Lumberjanes
Genre: F/F, Sheep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-14 22:54:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13600164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aponyforyourthroney/pseuds/aponyforyourthroney
Summary: That one time, at Lumberjanes camp, when they had to deal with a herd of possessed sheep.





	Bellwether, Book and Candle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [burglebezzlement](https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/gifts).



It starts out as an utterly unremarkable day at Miss Quinzilla Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle-Crumpet's Camp for Girls: early to rise, full of archery practice and knot-tying and poisonous plant identification. The first sign they have that anything’s gone wrong is the herd of sheep - usually they only escape in ones and twos - wandering into camp and disrupting rest period. Though wandering is putting it mildly. Stampeding, Rosie admits, would be more accurate.

That’s what Abigail says, anyway - she always cares more about accuracy than Rosie does; precision, Rosie figures, is mostly for target practice.

 _Abigail_ , though... she's perched on the porch railing of Roswell cabin, with her Lumberjanes journal on her lap already, the better to take notes on the sheep, Rosie guesses. Because if there’s a badge to be earned out of the situation, Abigail will be the one to earn it. And she might bring Rosie along for the ride. Is there a herding things one? Abigail probably knows that, too, though Rosie definitely doesn't (she doesn't even know where her Lumberjanes handbook has wandered off to - don't tell Miss Nellie).

“Sheep aren’t usually this aggressive?” Abigail asks, breaking Rosie out of her staring-at-stampeding-sheep (and Lumberjanes who would be stampeding if it wouldn't get them in trouble with Miss Nellie) reverie.

She lives in a suburb, in Connecticut, while Rosie lives in a farmhouse in Western Mass. Not that it’s a working farm. But it’s closer to farm animals than Abigail ever gets. Rosie wrinkles her nose and says, “I don’t think so? Rams, maybe, or maybe if you get them _really_ mad…”

“But we didn’t do anything to rile ‘em up...,” Abigail says, adding another note to her growing list.

“But Miss Nellie is going to make us all figure out how to calm them down,” Rosie concludes. Because that’s how their Camp Director works: any time the camp faces an unusual situation, the scouts are expected to put their exacting training to use and figure out how to solve the problem. Rosie doesn't mind, too much - sometimes it's really interesting - even though a lot of the time she doesn't have much to contribute besides hard work (her school reports always comment on _how hard she tries_ ). But she's certainly had her moments of wondering whether these things really ought to be the adults' problem. She's mostly not the kind of person given to deep thought, though...

Which is about when the camp loudspeaker booms out, “CAMPERS. ASSEMBLE.”

They sprint across the grassy area between the cabins and the dining hall, dodging sheep all the way, only to have Miss Nellie announce exactly what Rosie expected. And then it’s a long, hot afternoon of trying to deal with what Rosie has decided to call The Possessed Sheep Incident in _her_ Lumberjanes journal. If they were in a movie, there would be a montage of Lumberjanes: sitting in the camp library, researching unusual sheep incidents; trying to herd sheep that are entirely uninterested in being herded, and also inclined to charge; practicing their fighting under unusual conditions skills. Abigail is as good at all of it as she ever is, while Rosie feels all at once too large and too short and too clumsy to be much use, though she follows Abigail's antidote-brewing instructions to the letter when the time comes to brew up the weird fig-and-charcoal concoction Abigail found the recipe for. It bubbles and boils in the pot, while Rosie stands over it, wearing safety goggles and rubber gloves (ewwww) and Abigail reads off instructions and sheep periodically peer menacingly through the kitchen windows. They plan to dose the sheep with it, because the book said it would purge the animal of ille humours (which, Rosie thinks, is the best description of what's wrong with the sheep she's heard so far).

Or, well, they _attempt_ to dose the sheep with it.

They don’t have much success until Rosie manages to lead a team of other scouts in speed braiding enough friendship bracelets to make a net to drop over the herd, while Abigail and a crack team weilding eyedroppers of the foul stuff stand ready to dart in as soon as the sheep are immobilized again.

And then they almost wish they hadn't, because they don't get any warning before the sheep start emitting...fluids. From both ends. Rosie isn't usually a squeamish kind of person, but she draws the line at ending up dripping with sheep bile. Which is somehow worse than monster blood.

A different group of scouts gets the job of herding the sheep back to their owner. And yet another team gets to take samples of the sheep...fluids, and analyze them. But Rosie is off-duty, so she gets to stand there with Abigail's arm around her, afterwards. And feeling like the most awesome team of Lumberjanes to ever live? That's not so bad. Even if Rosie can think of other circumstances when she'd get to enjoy having Abigail's arm around her properly. Like, maybe Miss Nellie will let them have an ordinary camp camp-fire tonight, because they successfully solved the sheep problem. That would definitely be a better one.

They don't get the camp-fire, but it turns out there is a sheepherding and magic badge - which Rosie isn't 100% sure that Miss Nellie didn't make up on the spot - and Abigail does, as predicted, earn it.


End file.
